Team Learning

⚫ A concept given by Peter Senge

⚫ One of the components of his five principles
highlighted in the book
⚫ The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and
Tools for Building a Learning Organization (1994)
Team Learning and Senge
⚫ Innovative learning Organizations follow:

⚫ Systems thinking
⚫ Personal mastery
⚫ Mental models
⚫ Building shared vision
⚫ Team learning
Team Learning
⚫ Team learning is the process of aligning and
developing the capacity of a team to create
the results its members truly desire.
Personal Mastery
⚫ People with a high level of personal mastery live in a
continual learning mode.
⚫ They never ‘arrive’. Sometimes, language, such as the
term ‘personal mastery’ creates a misleading sense of
definiteness, of black and white. But personal mastery is
not something you possess. It is a process. It is a lifelong
discipline.
⚫ People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely
aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth
areas. And they are deeply self-confident.
Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see the ‘journey
is the reward’. (Senge 1990: 142)
Mental Models
⚫ These are ‘deeply ingrained assumptions,
generalizations, or even pictures and images
that influence how we understand the world
and how we take action’ (Senge 1990: 8).
Mental models
⚫ Effective Team performance depends on the
idea of team members hold common or
overlapping idea cognitive representations of
 task requirements, procedures, roles and
responsibilities.
Team Learning
⚫ The discipline of team learning starts with
‘dialogue’, the capacity of members of a team
to suspend assumptions and enter into a
genuine ‘thinking together’.
⚫ Team Learning also involves learning how to
recognize the patterns of interaction in teams
that undermine learning. (Senge 1990: 10)
Appreciative Inquiry and Team
Learning
⚫ Team learning and appreciative Inquiry both
follow a method of Dialogue and
constructionist approach.

⚫ Appreciative Inquiry is a technique which

aims to uncover the best things about the
organization or team being explored.
Genesis of Appreciative
Inquiry
⚫ Appreciative Inquiry was developed by David
Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastava at Case
Western University USA in 1987.

⚫ Basic premise: decision making use of excess

Problem-solving approach, rather it should follow
constructionist approach.
Dialogue
⚫ Greek word = Dialogos
⚫ Dia means through
⚫ Logos means the word, or more broadly, the
meaning.
Appreciative Inquiry

⚫ Appreciative Inquiry is a form of action

research that attempts to help groups,
organizations and communities create new,
 generative images for themselves based
on an affirmative understanding of their
past.
Appreciative inquiry and teams
⚫ AI is based on Socio-rationalist theory of
change, new images through AI are expected
to lead developmental change in the systems
in which they are created. (Barret, Thomas
and Hocevar, 1990)
Four Principles of Appreciative Inquiry (in the
context of action research)
⚫ Appreciation
⚫ Applicable
⚫ Provocative
⚫ Collaborative
Basic process of Appreciative inquiry

⚫ To Discover:
⚫ Begin with ground observation ‘‘Best of what is’’.
⚫ To Dream:
⚫ Through vision and logic articulate “What might be”.
Basic process of Appreciative Inquiry (contd.)

⚫ To Design:
⚫ Ensuring the consent of people who are in the
system “What should be”.

⚫ To Deliver:
⚫ Collective experiment with “What can be”.
 Advantages: Team learning
through AI
⚫ Innovative tool for team effectiveness

⚫ Effective method of decision making for a complex problem

⚫ Useful tool for creative team problem solving

⚫ Empowerment to team member through dialogue ⚫ Follow

team alignment approach than only collaboration.

⚫ Builds upon an organization/group’s strengths.

⚫ Celebrates things that are done well and so can have
very positive influence on morale, confidence and
esteem of individuals and Team.
Advantages AI
⚫ Participants can become energized and
motivated because they feel valued and
appreciated.

⚫ Can be easy to include people who don’t

usually take part in this kind of activity
 because of the conversational style of
questioning
Disadvantages
⚫ Can be time-consuming.
⚫ Might not work if you need to involve all key
stakeholders – the method itself doesn’t pay much
attention to who is involved.
⚫ Need a motivated core group to involve lots of
people.
⚫ Sometimes work needs to be done to get people
out of the SWOT (strengths weaknesses,
opportunities threat) mindset.